Jan 10 2024
Why you only need one H1 heading per post or page

The title of your post or page usually gets the H1 heading tag. It’s only logical to give your post one title, right? Having more than one H1 is like saying: “Hey, this text is about two topics of equal importance.” Yoast SEO warns you with a red traffic light if you use more than one H1 heading. Here, we’ll explain why your post or page only needs one H1 heading.

Table of contents

Did you get a red traffic light in Yoast SEO for using more than one H1 heading? Read more about what the single title check does and how you can fix the red or orange light.

Heading structure and SEO

In many CMSs like WordPress or Shopify, headings are ordered in ranks (or levels). The highest rank is H1, the title of your post or page. In the rest of the text, you use H2 – H6 headings. With them, you indicate the importance of each section and how it relates to the rest of the text. So, when a reader lands on your page, the headings help them make sense of the content. It helps readers to scan the text and learn how it fits together.

Search engines also “read” headings and try to understand the structure of your text. Instead of the regular text you and I read, they go to the HTML version of your site and read the HTML heading tags. The headings help them comprehend the relative importance of your text’s (sub)topic.

One or multiple H1s?

As mentioned above, the H1 is the title of your post (not to be confused with the SEO title). We would suggest using the H1 heading only once. We believe that’s the best choice because:

  • Headings help readers and Google understand your text. If there are multiple H1 headings, your readers and Google might get confused. People might get confused, distracted, or even frustrated when there’s no clear distinction between main and subtopics. As a result, they may leave your site.
  • Proper use of headings makes your text more accessible. Think of visually impaired people who use screen readers. These devices can use headings to navigate through your text. More than one H1 in one article complicates this, and without visual cues, it might confuse people even more.

Of course, using the other headings as much as you need is perfectly acceptable. Still, you should keep in mind that headings are hierarchical. For example, you should use H2 before you use H3 within a particular topic. Check out this extensive guide on headings and SEO if you want to use them optimally.

What does the single H1 heading check in Yoast SEO do?

The single H1 assessment of Yoast SEO (both in our WordPress SEO plugin and Shopify SEO app) checks whether the body of your text contains an H1 heading at any position other than the very beginning. If Yoast SEO detects an H1 heading in the body of your text, it gives you a red bullet in the feedback. Luckily, solving this issue is straightforward.

Yoast SEO lets you know when you’ve used multiple H1s in your text

Finding and changing your H1 headings

To ensure your post doesn’t have double titles, you’ll need to find all H1s in your text and change them to a lower heading level.

Changing an H1 heading in the classic editor in WordPress

If you click one of your headings in the classic editor, the clickable drop-down menu in the upper left corner will show the heading level you’ve selected. You can change it to another level by opening the drop-down menu and selecting another level. If the Yoast SEO feedback indicates that your text contains more than one H1 heading, check all your headings by clicking them. Then, select another level to change your H1 into H2 or another appropriate heading.

Turning selected text into a heading in WordPress classic editor

Changing an H1 heading in the block editor in WordPress

In the block editor, Yoast SEO helps you find the H1s quickly. Click the eye icon next to the assessment and see the H1 titles highlighted in the editor. If you want to change the level of your headings, click them. The menu bar above the block shows you the level of the heading. Then, select another level to change your H1 into H2 or another appropriate heading.

Change the header format by clicking on it

Changing an H1 heading in Shopify

When you go to one of your products or blog posts in the backend of Shopify, you’ll notice the ‘Title’ field at the top. This is where you fill in your title (which is automatically your H1 on that page).

In the description field below, you can write your product description or blog post and add headings by clicking the ‘Paragraph’ button above the content field. This dropdown allows you to add headings of different levels. If you get a red traffic light for your H1 assessment in Yoast SEO, find the wrong headings by clicking the eye icon. When you’ve found the H1 in your content, change it into H2 or another appropriate heading.

Click the eye icon to find the redundant H1s

Conclusion

Using headings in the right way helps your SEO. What you learned from this post is quite simple. An H1 heading is the title of your post. You don’t want double or triple titles, so use the H1 heading only once. If you need to remember, Yoast is here to help you!

If you’re on Shopify, the Yoast SEO app can help keep an eye on your headings and other important SEO elements. In addition, it gives you access to all of our SEO courses to master the art of SEO! When you’re on WordPress and ready to take your SEO to the next level, go Premium to get access to all the features in Yoast SEO and all of our SEO courses. This will help you further optimize your site for visitors and search engines.

Go Premium and get free access to our SEO courses!

Learn how to write great content for SEO and unlock lots of features with Yoast SEO Premium:

Read more: Complete beginner’s guide to SEO »



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Jan 4 2024
6 essential tips to save time in SEO

Whether you have a company website, a blog, or an (online) store, chances are you’ve got a lot to do. You’re probably busy leading your company, blogging, or making your customers happy with the necessary goods. SEO might not be top of mind at all times. Yet, you also know that higher rankings would most likely benefit your business. So, how do you do SEO efficiently? Here, we will give you some tips on how to save time in SEO!

Disclaimer: it’s a known fact that SEO also stands for Seriously Effortful Optimization, so you will only get to the top by putting in the work. You should focus on stuff that matters (creating excellent content, making your site fast, and providing the best user experience, i.e., doing holistic SEO). The biggest time saver is choosing the right SEO tools to help you perform these tasks.

Table of contents

1. Unlock time-saving optimization with AI

Embrace the cutting-edge AI capabilities of Yoast SEO Premium to streamline your content optimization process. This powerful feature effortlessly generates titles and meta descriptions for your content. It even extends its benefits to your product meta descriptions when using WooCommerce SEO.

By leveraging AI, you can say goodbye to hours spent brainstorming catchy titles and compelling meta descriptions. Let the AI-powered tool handle the heavy lifting, ensuring your content is search-engine friendly while freeing up valuable time. You can focus on delivering high-quality content to your audience while our generative AI feature handles the optimization.

Yoast SEO Premium uses generative AI to help you work faster

2. Improve existing content

Are you considering writing yet another post on topic X? Think twice. Before you write something new, please check which posts you already have on this topic. Do you find something similar that you’ve written two or three years ago? You can refresh the existing post instead of writing a brand new post. Add new insights, add a hook to current news, improve the quality, and merge it with another post on the same topic on your site. Update it, and you can even share it again in your newsletter or on social media.

This is beneficial in more than one way:

  • It will prevent keyword cannibalization: if you have multiple similar posts on the same topic, your rankings for that query can deteriorate.
  • You’ve eliminated that old article and shown users the best and most updated content. This serves both your users and Google!
  • And, of course, you’ll save time by reusing content. In most cases, rewriting and updating content takes less time than writing something from scratch.

If you want to refresh your content smartly to benefit your SEO, check out our blog post on updating your content in 10 steps. A tool that saves time in the updating process is Yoast Duplicate Post. This free plugin allows you to duplicate and rewrite an existing post as a draft. When it’s ready, you can just hit ‘republish’ (or schedule) it. No more copying and pasting or inconveniently working in docs!

The duplicate post menu item with the rewrite and republish feature
Creating a new draft or clone with Yoast Duplicate Post

One of the first things many SEOs do when auditing a site for the first time is to check the internal linking profile of a website. You could write a thousand articles, but if they don’t get links (external and internal), not many people will find them, making all the writing you’ve done a waste of time. A good site structure can boost your rankings, especially if you structure your site according to the cornerstone content principle.

In a nutshell, the cornerstone content principle means linking related posts. And most importantly, link these posts to the best, most complete article you’ve written on that topic. This is the article that touches on all aspects of the topic. It’s the article that you surely want to rank with! Because this post (or page) gets the most internal links, it sends signals to Google that this is the most important post on that topic.

Internal linking with Yoast SEO Premium

Without any help, implementing this is a lot of work: finding out which posts are related, making sure they’re linked, and manually checking whether they all link to a cornerstone article. Fortunately, Yoast SEO Premium has an excellent feature to help you save time: the internal linking suggestions tool. It will find and show suggestions for related articles to link to next to the post editor in the Yoast SEO sidebar. Pick the ones that you think fit best in the context of your post.

internal linking suggestions in Yoast SEO sidebar
Easily add contextual links with Yoast SEO Premium

Moreover, you can mark your posts as cornerstone content in the backend with Yoast SEO. If you’ve done this and you’re writing a related post, this cornerstone article will show up on top in the suggestions. So you won’t forget to link to those!

Of course, you need more than just internal links for SEO. Nothing beats getting an external link from a high-authority website to build your authoritativeness (part of E-E-A-T). So, building backlinks remains key to achieving good results in SEO. Unfortunately, there’s not a shortcut here. You’ll need outstanding and genuinely original content to earn backlinks nowadays. Plus, you must put effort into the necessary outreach to get the word out about the fantastic things you do, create, or write.

SEO can be overwhelming. You’re never done with SEO, and the tasks you want or need to do can pile up. As a result, you can lose track of everything on your plate, which can even lead to overwhelmed paralysis. It is stressful and not helpful if you want to save time. It’s good to get an overview of the SEO improvements you want to work on to prevent feeling overwhelmed or regain control. Productivity tools like Trello or Todoist can help you attain and keep this overview.

When you’ve organized your board, you’ll need to prioritize. But you might wonder: which tasks on your board come first? Well, as always in SEO, the answer is: it depends. Are significant technical flaws preventing Google from correctly crawling and indexing your site? The obvious answer is to start with that. Do you use huge images on your site, causing pages to load for ages? That might be a good starting point, too.

As for content improvements, it’s impossible to give one-fits-all advice. One principal recommendation, and maybe stating the obvious: make sure your priorities are aligned with your business goals. Are you focusing on getting more sales right now? Optimizing your product pages probably makes sense. Do you want to establish sustainable growth? Focus on the long-term with sustainable SEO.

Are you still feeling overwhelmed? Then, starting with more minor, easy-to-accomplish tasks might be a good idea. Getting into a flow of achieving things and moving cards to done can give that positive energy needed to take up the more significant tasks.

5. Optimize your post for synonyms and related keyphrases

What if you want to rank for multiple queries with one post? That would be a huge time-saver, right? The good news is that you can and might even already do. Of course, there’s one significant constraint: the queries must be very similar. For instance, if you write about sustainable hen houses, it might be worth optimizing for a synonym such as eco-friendly poultry houses too. Using synonyms is a best practice not only for SEO but also for readability. Generally, people don’t like repeatedly reading the same word in a text.

Using synonyms will also help Google to understand the topic better. You’re giving them more context on the topic, making it easier to identify which entity you’re writing about. The same goes for related keyphrases; it will provide Google with the context to show your post or page for the correct query. If you want to optimize your post for related keywords, our Semrush integration can save time finding these. It will show related queries to your focus keyphrase with search volume.

Semrush integration Yoast SEO
Related keyphrase suggestions by Semrush in Yoast SEO

In Yoast SEO Premium, you can set keyphrase synonyms and related keyphrases. The SEO analysis will consider these phrases when analyzing your text and give you feedback so you can also optimize for these phrases. As explained, this will result in more natural writing and a better understanding of the post’s topic by Google. And it can save you time because you won’t write essentially identical posts. As a bonus, you’re not creating duplicate content or causing keyword cannibalization.

6. Preview your social post in the admin

We think sharing your content on social should be part of your SEO efforts. When you’ve written a blog post and plan to share it on social media, you want to ensure it looks good on your timeline. But if you need to do that on the social media platform itself, it does take some time. You must go back and forth between platforms, adapt and upload improved images, etc.

A small but easy time-saving feature in Yoast SEO Premium is our social media preview functionality. It will show you what your post looks like when shared on Facebook or X. Does the image fit, and does the title look good? If you use it, you’re no longer in the dark about the appearance of your post on your timeline. And it saves you time switching between platforms and copy-pasting URLs.

Moreover, you can even set default templates for specific post types. For instance, at Yoast, we set those for help articles. We don’t share these frequently on social media, so we won’t create individual images for all these articles. But setting a good fall-back image prevents these posts from looking misfitted when shared by someone else. Read more about our default social templates.

Save time in SEO

So that’s it. These are our tips on saving time in SEO. It mostly comes down to focusing on what matters and using the right tools. Over to you! Do you have any tremendous time-saving tips? Please share them in the comments!

Read more: Save time in SEO with these tips »



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

Avatar of Edwin Toonen

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Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jan 3 2024
How to use the readability analysis in Yoast SEO

If you’re a user of Yoast SEO for WordPress or Shopify, then you’re probably familiar with the traffic lights in our plugin. Three parts of Yoast SEO use this system: the content analysis, the readability analysis, and the inclusive language analysis. The first checks whether your post or product pages are SEO-proof, while the latter checks if they’re readable for a general audience. The third checks if your content has language that might exclude people. Of course, these are interconnected, as readable content is crucial if you want your site to do well in the search results. Here, we’ll show you how to use the readability analysis.

What does the readability analysis in Yoast SEO do?

The readability analysis in Yoast SEO uses an algorithm to determine how readable your text is. We’ve crafted this algorithm to make it as accurate as possible without being too strict. It features several checks that will give you advice when you write your page. In other words, following this advice makes your text easier to read and understand.

It has been said that Yoast SEO suggests dumbing down your writing. Of course, that’s not the case. We merely want to help people write content that’s easy to understand. Just consider the following quote by content design hero Sarah Richards about making your content as readable for humans as possible:

“You’re not dumbing down, you’re opening up.”

By simplifying content, you’re automatically growing your audience as more people grasp the message of your content. Also, you’re not writing your content just for people anymore. Because virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri must also be able to work with it. Even Google increasingly uses well-written content for rich results like featured snippets, not to mention all the AI tools that love good content.

That being said, while the advice in the readability section is not the be-all and end-all advice, it does give you important clues to the perceived difficulty of your text. Writing with readability in mind is crucial, as readability ranks!

Current readability checks in Yoast SEO

The current readability checks are available in Yoast SEO:

  • Transition words: Do you use transition words like ‘most importantly’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, or ‘besides that’ to tie your text together? Using these words improves the flow of your article as they provide hints to the reader about what is coming next.
  • Sentence beginnings: Do any of your consecutive sentences start with the same word? This might feel repetitive to your reader, and that can be annoying. Always keep your sentences varied, so your article is readable and free of obstacles. Unless you want to prove something or use it as a writing style, of course.
  • Word complexity: It would be a shame if you write something and your readers can’t fully grasp it, right? The more uncommon and complicated words you use, the harder it might be for your visitors to understand your writing.  Thanks to the feedback from this assessment, you can easily identify complex words and change them accordingly. We’ll highlight them for you so you don’t have to spend time looking.
  • Paragraph length: Some people tend to use extremely long paragraphs. Doing so makes your text look daunting as it becomes just one big blob of text. Break it up, use shorter paragraphs and don’t forget to give your core sentences some thought.
  • Subheading distribution: Similarly to long paragraphs, texts without subheadings are difficult to scan, which makes them rather daunting. So, we check if you use enough subheadings to guide your readers through the text and help them find what they’re looking for.
  • Sentence length: Sentence length is one of the core aspects that can make a text hard to read. If most of your sentences are too long – over 20 words – people lose track of your point. Readers often have to jump back a few words to find out what you mean. This is very tiring and inefficient. Try to keep the number of words in a sentence in check. Shorten your sentences. Aim for easy understanding, not a complex literary masterpiece.
  • Passive voice: Using a lot of passive voice in your text makes it appear distant, and your message will be less clear. Your sentences become wordy and difficult because the sentence structure is harder to understand. Whenever you use the passive voice, always consider whether a better, active alternative is available.
  • Transition words: Do you use transition words like ‘most importantly’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, or ‘besides that’ to tie your text together? Using these words improves the flow of your article as they provide hints to the reader about what is coming next.
  • Sentence beginnings (doesn’t apply for Product pages): Do any of your consecutive sentences start with the same word? This might feel repetitive to your reader, and that can be annoying. Always keep your sentences varied, so your article is readable and free of obstacles. Unless you want to prove something or use it as a writing style, of course.
  • Paragraph length: Some people tend to use extremely long paragraphs. Doing so makes your text look daunting as it becomes just one big blob of text. Break it up, use shorter paragraphs and don’t forget to give your core sentences some thought.
  • Subheading distribution: Similarly to long paragraphs, texts without subheadings are difficult to scan, which makes them rather daunting. So, we check if you use enough subheadings to guide your readers through the text and help them find what they’re looking for.
  • Sentence length: Sentence length is one of the core aspects that can make a text hard to read. If most of your sentences are too long – over 20 words – people lose track of your point. Readers often have to jump back a few words to find out what you mean. This is very tiring and inefficient. Try to keep the number of words in a sentence in check. Shorten your sentences. Aim for easy understanding, not a complex literary masterpiece.
  • Passive voice: Using a lot of passive voice in your text makes it appear distant, and your message will be less clear. Your sentences become wordy and difficult because the sentence structure is harder to understand. Whenever you use the passive voice, always consider whether a better, active alternative is available.
  • Lists (Product pages only): Using lists in your product pages enable your customers to scan the content on the page, and help highlight the benefits and features of your product. Try to include at least one list (ordered or unordered) in your product description.

Supported languages

The readability analysis is available in many languages. Check out the languages Yoast SEO supports for an overview. We’re continually working on adding new languages.

How to use the readability analysis in Yoast SEO

The readability analysis

You can find the readability analysis in your Yoast sidebar in WordPress and Shopify. In WordPress, you can also find the readability checks in the Yoast SEO meta box underneath the post or page you edit.

It’s very easy to use the analysis to improve your content. You can start writing the article you want to write. The readability score is calculated in real-time, so you can look at it while you write. However, if you want to stay focused, you can also choose not to look at the score while writing your first draft. That way, you can write without being distracted and make the final tweaks afterward.

The readability score helps you by giving you a green, orange, or red traffic light per check. If you get orange or red traffic lights, click on the eye icon to determine where improvements can be made. Easy peasy!

Everyone has their own writing and editing process, and this way isn’t necessarily how you should use it. You have to find out what works for you gradually. Practice makes perfect!

It’s good to note that the word complexity assessment is a Premium feature. If you’re using the free version of Yoast SEO, you’ll see this feature being greyed out. Upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium now to unlock this feature!

The readability analysis in the Yoast SEO for WordPress metabox

Should all traffic lights be green?

We often get this question: no, not every traffic light has to be green. What you should aim for, though, is a green, happy traffic light overall — the one in the tab that reads “Readability”. An orange traffic light for one of the checks, like in the screenshot above, is fine. Your article will still be able to rank even if it doesn’t pass all of the tests. This is merely an indication, not a necessity.

We want everyone to be able to read and understand content, but we also know that there are industries where the language used is different from what most people would use. That’s perfectly fine. Find out what works for you. Need help? Please read our ultimate guide to SEO copywriting.

Try it out!

The readability analysis and content analysis of Yoast SEO help you write excellent, SEO-proof articles and product pages that are easy for anyone to grasp. In doing so, you ensure that every piece of content you write is ready to start ranking in search engines while staying enjoyable for readers. Don’t have Yoast SEO yet? Do you want to use our Premium plugins’ excellent additional features? Find out about all the benefits of Yoast SEO for WordPress and Yoast SEO for Shopify!

Read more: How to use Yoast SEO’s content analysis tool »



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Dec 14 2023
Copywriting for mobile

We’re in the smartphone era, which means a large part of your audience will use your site via mobile. So, what does this mean? Do you need to write differently if you’re copywriting for a ‘mobile’ audience? In this post, we’ll share some useful tips on how to write awesome texts that are great for both desktops and mobile devices.

Why is copywriting for mobile different?

Even with responsive website designs, reading on a mobile device is still different from reading on a desktop. Since phone screens are smaller, text will appear longer because it takes up more space, and people have to scroll to read everything (which will make it feel longer to read).

What’s more, lots of people use their mobile device ‘on the go’, while also doing other things. This means their attention span and concentration are limited. They’re easily distracted, so you want to grab their attention with short and concise content when you’re copywriting for mobile.

Tip 1: Always focus on your audience

While it’s good to focus on the question ‘how can I write good texts for smartphone users’, you shouldn’t lose track of the most important question: ‘what does my audience like?’ Because phones won’t read your content. But your audience will! That’s why it’s good to keep an eye on your audience’s interests, and write about those topics.

Tip 2: Make your fonts large enough

Font size is important for your mobile UX. You want your texts to be readable without folks having to squint or pinch and zoom; especially your base font – your paragraph font – should be readable. So don’t use your desktop font size on your mobile site. At least, not without checking how it looks on mobile first. And while you’re at it, check it for tablets too.

How many font sizes should you use?

Be aware that your mobile site will look messy when you use more than three font sizes. The size differences will be much more visible. That’s why we advise limiting the number to two, maybe three, sizes.

Read more: 10 ways to improve mobile UX »

Tip 3: Write short sentences

Don’t use too many long sentences. As we’ve said before, people who search on their phone want fast and short answers. To illustrate, a sentence of 25 words takes up two lines on an average desktop screen. But on a phone screen, those 25 words will be four lines. That’s twice as long!

Not to mention, long sentences make reading your text much more difficult. This is true for desktop as well, but it’s even more important when you write for a mobile audience. So, try to address your audience’s specific pain points with your copy and quickly offer a solution.

Tip 4: Add subheadings

Mobile users often skim texts. So, if you want your content to be easy to read, break it up with informative subheadings. These subheadings will guide your readers through your text, making your message much easier to digest. They’re almost like road signs, guiding your users to the good stuff.

Tip 5: Check your white space

Don’t be afraid to let your words breathe. Since phones have smaller screens, you don’t want your text to look cramped. By giving your content some room, it will be easier to read. Plus, if you have sufficient white space between sentences, people will be able to easily tap on clickable elements with their finger.

If you’re unsure how much white space is enough, you should check on multiple devices how it looks. And feel free to ask other people what they think!

Tip 6: Keep an eye on text-structure

If your text is well structured, people will more easily understand the main message of your post. If it’s not, people might get lost and tune out. So the structure of your text should be flawless.

A well-structured text has two things:

  1. Paragraphs that follow each other in a logical order.
  2. Sentences that are connected to each other, usually by transition words. These words will help people understand the meaning of your text.

Remember, copywriting for mobile is all about writing texts that are easy to read. So, pay attention to your text structure and make sure it makes sense.

Keep reading: 10 copywriting tips – from experts to experts »

Tip 7: Don’t be afraid to use images or videos

With shorts and reels and all types of short-form video trending right now, you’d be a fool not to use some type of multimedia on your mobile site. So, use high-quality visuals that underline or amplify the main message of your text. And mind the file size! Nobody likes a slow-loading website.

And remember: using images or videos isn’t just about making your site look good. You want them to enhance your user’s experience.

Short and sweet

If you want to use videos on your pages or posts, keep in mind that they need to be short! Mobile users are like speed daters, they want to know who and what and why fast. A short video will keep them hooked and on your site.

And of course, don’t forget to add captions. People who search on their phone are usually outside or on public transport, so they can’t turn on their volume. By using captions, you’ll ensure that people will be able to watch your video.

Conclusion: readability is of the utmost importance on mobile

Copywriting for mobile is not that different from writing for a desktop. In both cases, you need to write for a real audience. However, ‘mobile’ texts demand an even better readability than ‘desktop’ texts, because reading from a mobile screen is more challenging than from a desktop. But if you make sure your readability is top-notch, your texts will have loads of readers, both on mobile devices and desktops.

Read on: Mobile SEO: the ultimate guide »



Cindy Paul

Cindy is a content manager at Yoast. She writes and optimizes blog posts, and enjoys writing content that will help people create better content for their site and users.

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